"Don't have anything to do with him, Arthur; he's a bad lot, a very bad lot indeed. Oh, it's nothing that he has done. I wouldn't say to anyone else what I am saying to you. But I can read character, and I have observed Master Constantine. He's so selfish that he would boil Emily for his own gratification, if it pleased him. And she would let herself be boiled, too; she's as silly over the scamp as he is selfish towards her. Why do you cultivate his society? Eh, what? It's wrong and stupid; yes, yes, stupid and wrong."
"I haven't seen so very much of him since we left Oxford," objected Arthur, "and certainly I don't cultivate him, as you put it, for I admire his character as little as you do."
"And on more tangible grounds, perhaps? Eh, what? Tell me."
"No; I have not much to go on. At school and at college, and when we were children together in Berkshire, I never wholly liked Constantine. He's too selfish and too unscrupulous, although he always keeps on the right side of the law. Still, if he could do anything for his own benefit against the law without being found out and made to pay the penalty, I believe he would have little hesitation in doing it."
"I daresay; no doubt you speak the exact truth from intuition. He's a snake that young man, a pretty, curly, insinuating snake; he's poison in a well-shaped and well-coloured bottle. Poor Emily! poor Emily! silly woman, but goodness itself. She's a Mrs. Lear with a thankless adopted child, sharper than a serpent's tooth. Bless her, and damn him for a rogue, though, bless me, I can't bring any actual charge against the young beast. Ha, no! but when one sees smoke, one guesses fire."
"Did you tell him that I was Nemo?" asked Vernon bluntly.
Dimsdale grew furiously red and furiously angry, so angry indeed that he rose to stamp about the room. "How the devil can you ask me such a question, and how dare you, if it comes to that? Am I an ass, an idiot, a babbler? I wouldn't tell Maunders that I had eaten my dinner, much less inform him of a secret which it is to your advantage to keep. Why do you ask? Hang you, for thinking me a traitor and a gossip."
"Forgive me," said Vernon with an apologetic air. "I am quite sure that you have preserved the secret of how I earn my money. But I know that Constantine haunts your house, and thought you might have let drop a casual hint, which he is clever enough, as we both know, to take advantage of. But the fact is he had found out about Nemo, and threatens unless I take him into partnership--he has given me a month to turn over the proposition--that he will make Society too hot to hold me."
"The young rascal, the young blackmailing scoundrel," cried Dimsdale, stamping again. "It's just what he would do. He haunts my house to make love to Ida, and I would rather see her dead than as his wife, especially now that I know what I am about to tell you."
"What is it?"